The Owl and the Butterfly: Jack Shadbolt, In His Words
English
Why do I paint? I paint because I must.
But why must I? As Picasso would
answer, why must a bird sing?
I want a kind of dangerous art, risking the daemonic
a form emerging out of chaos like a rare monster surfacing from the deep, throwing off
spumes, breathing the air.
Jack Leonard Shadbolt (19091998) was one of Canadas most prolific modernist artists, deeply influenced both by the West Coast landscapes and cultures that surrounded him and by the wider international currents in artmaking. Throughout his life, he remained singularly fixated on the question of how to make great art, bringing articulate and piercing analysis to a life-long search for meaning through his ceaseless acts of art.
He also yearnedas we all doto belong and to be understood. Using excerpts from his sometimes startlingly self-confessional journals, letters, talks, and writings, as well as his poetry, arts critic Susan Mertenswho enjoyed a twenty-five-year friendship with Shadboltcrafts an intimate and candid collage of an extraordinarily driven and divided personality navigating the rapidly changing social and artistic challenges of the 20th century.
This is the memoir Shadbolt never quite got around to writing. See more
Will deliver when available. Publication date 26 Dec 2024